Second half of the 19th century · Social observation and rural world

Naturalism paints modern society with direct attention to work, living conditions, landscape and the physical truth of figures.

Pictorial naturalism developed in the second half of the 19th century from the realism of Courbet, Millet and Rosa Bonheur. He shares with the literature of Émile Zola and the Goncourt brothers the ambition to observe a world transformed by industrialization, migrations, science and social tensions. Artists favor workers, peasants, markets, streets, seasonal work and ordinary gestures, often in large formats previously reserved for history or mythology. In the 1870s and 1880s, Jules Bastien-Lepage combined academic drawing, the outdoors and light tones to give the rural world a new monumentality. Jules Breton, Émile Friant, Ilya Répine and Joaquin Sorolla develop national variants, from social realism to narrative emotion. Les Glaneuses de Millet, Un burial à Ornans by Courbet, Les Foins and Le Marché aux cheval show how naturalist painting transforms daily observation into human, political and poetic experience. The "Naturalisme" selection notably compares Des gleaners - Jean-François Millet and Un burial à Ornans - Gustave Courbet. His reading favors the story.

Naturalism does not seek the picturesque anecdote: it gives work, fatigue and ordinary life the dignity of great painting.